Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Oprah










I have a love -hate relationship with The Oprah Show. I have watched Oprah on and off for many, many years. I usually enjoy her celebrity interviews, I used to follow her book club selections religiously.



I became very disillusioned with Oprah a couple of years ago when she publicly denounced James Frey on her show. I had read his novel A Million Little Pieces. I enjoyed the book. The novel had been touted as a memoir- turns out that parts of it had not been exactly truthful. Unfortunately Oprah's people did not do their fact checking and when it came out the Oprah had been "duped" by the author she was livid. She publicly humiliated James Frey on her show. I have never seen anything like it. I truly thought that he might go home after the show and harm himself- she called him a liar and laid him open in front of millions of viewers. It was in my opinion a blatant display of a power crazed woman who had been embarrassed in front of her viewers.














Lately I have given Oprah another chance and I have been impressed. She recently did a couple of shows on talking about sex with your daughters. Nicole and I watched these together ( Katie was still in Luxembourg). Nicole and I have a very open and close relationship-we talk about pretty much everything, but Oprah hit on topics that even we had not talked about yet. It was a very well done show, she took a lot of flack from her viewers for things that had been said on the show but I applaud her for her honesty and integrity. I also read today that Oprah has called James Frey and apologized for what happened on her show. It takes a big person to admit when they are wrong.

I guess I will keep on watching... for now.

3 comments:

  1. I love Oprah but like you don't watch her religiously. Actually, hardly at all now simply because never think of it. And I don't read the same books she does, we don't have the same tastes so the whole Frey thing never bothered me. Besdes, it was just a book!! No need to get so excited!! But i'm glad to hear she apologized. And in the end, i thnk the author only benefted anyway from all the hooplah her outrage created.

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  2. Haha, just reread my post and it sounds like i'm telling you not to get so excited!! I meant Oprah, she shouldn't have overreacted.

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  3. Glad to hear she apologized... that puts her back up a notch in my book. I think she's great but it must be pretty hard to stay grounded when you're that rich and powerful. She seems genuinely interested in helping people though, and I admire that. And I loved watching her cry all over that stranger at the Obama speech.

    I haven't been watching the sex talk shows but I've been following the topics on her section of cnn.com. I hope I can have as open a relationship with Daniel as many of my friends (Lynn included) seem to have with their daughters. I feel like we've covered a lot of subject matter already and he's only 8, so here's hoping... did you see the link Deb posted on FB to a British sex talk article?

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